farting
I was thinking about this the other day as I put a swim diaper on my kid. A real, useful swim diaper, made of cloth, with snug elastic all the way around each leg and the waist. And how so many people come to the Y with kids in disposable swim diapers, and have to be told to put rubber pants over them so we don’t wind up with fecal contamination.
The stupid disposable swim diapers don’t have elastic all the way around the legs. So if a baby poops, the poop can float out pretty easily. This made me wonder why the fuck we have disposable swim diapers that can’t contain poop, and the answer I came up with (other than corporate greed) is this: disposable swim diapers help people to delude themselves that they aren’t swimming in highly dilute baby piss. If babies wear diapers that look a lot like normal diapers, we can pretend that the diaper is magically containing the pee, just like Pampers do, and it isn’t getting into our precious pool water.
Me, I don’t care. As said above, urine is sterile, and it’s so diluted who cares, and the water flowing past the adult assholes is actually far more disturbing. I think being a mom helps. Once my first kid actually vomited in my mouth and I survived, my ick meter was completely recalibrated.
They don’t?
When I was a kid, at camp and other places we were told that there was a special chemical in the pool water that would turn (green? … some color) if someone peed. Ergo, everyone would know that you were the guilty party. I was terrified to pee in the pool as a result, and I’m pretty sure most of my little friends felt the same way.
I have not spent too much mental energy on this since then, but reading this thread makes me wonder if:
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Anyone else was threatened with the magic pee-identifying chemical?
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Wait, there probably wasn’t any such chemical at all, right? It was relying on a kid’s fear of public humiliation. Because I never, ever, saw this mystery chemical turn green, and you would think that with all those years of camp, and all those little kids, that someone would have an accident.
Huh.
I just can’t believe it would ever occur to anyone to want to pee in the pool. Am I the only one who pretty much can’t pee anywhere else, even if I’m “allowed” to?
Ha ha, Not a chance.
Nope. No such chemical exists.
I agree that it’s not just kids. A lot of adults pee in the pool too…simply because a lot of people are lazy and don’t want to bother getting out of the pool, drying off, then getting used to the water temperature again when they come back when it is so easy to just pee right in the pool.
I also guarantee you that the vast majority of people don’t pre-shower before swimming.
I try not to swallow water when I’m swimming just to be on the safe side, but unless you’re on chemotherapy, have HIV, or otherwise have weakened immunity I don’t think it is worth worrying about. You are probably in more danger of getting sick while on land from the countless people who sneeze in their hands or go to the bathroom without washing their hands.
I am a master of peeing in pools and pretty much everywhere else in public without people noticing. I learned that in New Orleans where you could be drunk as as a skunk and armed without much problem but you couldn’t pee in public especially on private property. I once walked down Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue at night, threaded my tiny member out of my zipper and peed for a good block or so without anyone noticing. The one thing you don’t want to do (as a male) is try to spread your legs and simulate mating with a tree while you give a wizz because people will take notice. Dogs are allowed to do it and I like to think that I am better than at least a few of them so I don’t see the problem.
If you really wanted to “help”, you would’ve pointed out that, from a bird’s perspective, an outdoor pool is essentially one giant toilet bowl.
The kind with the colored water, even.
Hard to be worried about swimming in the human pee when you’re floating around with all that bird poop…
Before we moved into our house (that has a pool) we lived in several apartments that had pools.
The worst was apartment buildings with people who would take little kids with diapers into the pool…feces is very dangerous in swimming pools and even a bit in your mouth, or eyes, can cause serious illnesses.
From Revolution Health website:
“A dirty diaper may contain diarrhea-causing germs, including the parasite cryptosporidium. This parasite can contaminate pool water or other swimming areas. In otherwise healthy people, a cryptosporidium infection causes severe diarrhea lasting from one to two weeks. The consequences can be more severe for people who have weak immune systems.
Urine in a pool is less risky than feces. But when you have a child who wears diapers, it’s difficult to separate the two. I generally discourage parents from allowing children in diapers to enter a pool.”
I also saw idiots who brought their dogs and let them swim in the pools - and although I love dogs, I think letting them spring into a community pool is gross.
I stayed at a hotel once that had one of those swim up bars at the pool. Me and the group I was with stayed there for a good while getting hammered.
After about my third trip to the bathroom, I realized, I was the only dolt getting up to go to the restroom to pee. When I asked my friends: “Damn! Don’t any of you guys have to go to the bathroom yet?” They all kind of looked at each other and started laughing in unison. It was pretty much understood where they were taking their leaks at.
I guess the alcohol took away the “ick” factor as my dumbass sat right back down and continued to drink with those barbaric mother f’ers.
All that aside. If you have a good grip of the science of it all; it’s not a big deal.
Think about it…millions of people swim in public pools that are chlorinated. We all survived despite swimming in partial urine. Socially unacceptable, sure…but widely done and harmless.
The pee never bothered me, but after living in the city for a while and seeing the hygenic state of the general public, I got pretty skeeved out about swimming in public pools with them. I guess if the chlorine can defend against the urine, a little body grease, grime, sweat and odor ain’t no big thing, but it still makes me squirrelly.
:eek:
Just … :eek:
All this talk of swimming in water that’s gently lapping at other people’s assholes, and of swallowing crypto spores or getting them in your eyes, and of whether or not urine is harmless, and of swimming in other peoples’ “toilet water” … I’m eating, people, eating breakfast while I read this, and I’m not the least bit grossed out.
I have a disturbingly high “ick” threshold, I really do. Could have become a surgeon - if I had the work ethic to hack the residency hours - and spent my days cutting *open *people’s assholes without even *thinking *the word “ick.”
But this …
Dear, sweet <insert Diety here>
I … I’m … I …
<swoons>
<recovers briefly>
Delphica, I have vague memories of the magical color-changing chemical, too!
I think maybe, since dentists have those chewy tablets that turn your teeth bright … red? was it red? … to show you where you haven’t brushed properly, this must have been how the pool/pee chemical thing started. Kids already know about one magical substance that turns colors to tattle on you when you’re “bad,” so it’s not much of a stretch to tell 'em that now there’s another one in the pool.
I never saw a sudden, bright-green cloud around some kid in the pool, either.
<remembers Cinnamon’s posts, turns white again>
A while back, I had been using this self-tanning lotion on my legs, and I had finally gotten my skin from moon-white to palest yellow. One day, I took the kids swimming at the neighborhood pool and when I got out, my legs had developed cheddar-colored splotches. I said, “Wow, that pee chemical really works!” The kids were devastated. 
My parents’ pool at their beach house has one of those little pool cleaning robots in it that wanders around the bottom and hoovers up stuff. My dad calls it the “little man” and tells my niece and nephews that the little man will tell on them if they pee in the pool.
Awesome!
Thanks for the Snopes links. I do disagree a bit though, with her claim that such a chemical wouldn’t reveal who peed in the pool. It was clearly spelled out in the kid-lore that the culprit would have a dark green (or red or whatever colored) cloud hovering tellingly around his/her crotch area during the actual peeing that would then would fade as as it dissipated throughout the rest of the pool. It was the fear of being ridiculed when caught in the act that motivated us. It certainly worked on me, I never peed in the pool! Perhaps I will start now …
I love that you spelled this out and signed off on it as well.